


take care

by andnowforyaya



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Catboys, Dubious Consent, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Offscreen character death, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:34:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27895390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: please read the tags before proceeding!
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny, Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny/Qian Kun
Comments: 61
Kudos: 203





	take care

**Author's Note:**

> please read the tags before proceeding!

The bike ride back to their apartment was long, and heavy, and quiet. At a traffic light while they waited for it to turn green, Johnny folded his hand over Ten’s that were clasped tightly just under Johnny’s navel. He could feel Ten shaking against his back. He could feel Ten trying not to, and failing. He squeezed Ten’s hands harder to let him know he could carry part of the burden, if Ten needed, if Ten wanted, all the way home and beyond. 

_It feels like a hole in my chest,_ Ten had said earlier this morning. _And I’m falling in._

The light turned green. Johnny didn’t feel a thing. He eased his hand off the clutch and they crawled forward, building speed.

.

“I want to drink until I blackout,” Ten said once they had crossed the threshold into their home. His hands were trembling as he slipped his jacket from his shoulders, revealing his black silk shirt underneath. His ears, like a cat’s, had remained flattened against his skull, nearly hidden in his dark hair, since he eased the helmet from his head. 

“I don’t know if that’s—”

“Johnny,” Ten begged, his eyes wide, dark, lost. He was falling. He’d been falling all day. All week. “ _Please_.”

Johnny sighed. Ran his fingers through his blond hair, his own ears flicking in distress. “Fine. We have whiskey, I think.”

“You’re the best.” Ten rose up onto his toes and kissed Johnny on the cheek. It was a quick, dry kiss. Barren. Johnny understood; Ten didn’t have a lot to give right now. The other day Johnny had painstakingly padded through their apartment, turning down pictures of them together in their frames, thinking that would help, but there were still traces of Kun everywhere.

They made their way into the kitchen, and Johnny poured them both a generous helping of whiskey over ice. 

“To Kun,” Ten whispered, toasting.

Johnny clinked his glass against Ten’s. “To Kun.”

The whiskey tasted like honey going down his throat. 

.

Johnny awoke 4 hours later to a pounding headache and Ten writhing in the sheets beside him, groaning in what sounded like pain. He flicked the bedside light on and felt his jaw go slack when he saw the flush that covered Ten’s skin, when he noticed the smell of him, Ten’s honeyed scent, beginning to pervade all his senses. 

Ten’s shirt had rucked up to his chest, and his shorts—which Johnny had wrangled him into before he passed out—were bunched high over his thighs, and Ten’s hands roamed the smooth expanse of his stomach, inching lower and lower, his breath hitching and catching. His shorts were wet, the insides of his thighs glistening.

It clicked.

“You didn’t take your suppressants,” Johnny said in a choked whisper. He was afraid to breathe too deeply lest Ten's scent overwhelm his senses completely. 

“Fuck,” Ten sobbed. His face was wretched and blotchy and shiny with tears. “I’m the worst—I forgot. I forgot because I was—I forgot—”

Johnny crushed him against his chest tightly, stifling his cries, suffocating him with his own scent. Woodsy, earthy, natural. “It’s not your fault,” he said, rubbing Ten’s back.

“I don’t want this,” Ten gasped, clutching at Johnny’s shoulders, his back. His hands scrabbled over Johnny’s skin as though for purchase on a cliff face. “I don’t want this right now. His _funeral_ was today, Johnny.”

“I know, baby.”

“I want to die,” Ten cried. “Oh, I want to—”

Johnny pushed Ten’s sweaty, clumped hair back from his forehead and kissed him there, pressing into him, rolling them both over so that he was a firm weight over Ten’s slighter form. His eyes burned and filled as Ten shook and fought against him without any real hope of being able to overcome him. He cupped Ten’s face into his hands and did his best to keep his breath steady even while his chest was caving in with the thought of what was coming for them both. 

Johnny held him. “Ten, look at me.” 

Ten looked, blinking away a stream of tears. 

“We’re going to get through this. You are. But we can’t ignore your Heat.”

A sob wracked through Ten’s body, and then a shiver as his Heat began to take root in his belly. His pupils were blown, dark hair matted against his forehead. He looked miserable.

“I miss him. I miss him so much.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Johnny said, leaning down and kissing Ten’s wet cheek. 

“You loved him, too,” Ten said desperately. His fingers clawed into Johnny’s biceps, digging trenches, searching for a place. 

“I did.”

“It hurts,” Ten said, like a secret he was finally unleashing into the world, and then he tumbled into the wide canyon of his Heat, lost for a time.

Johnny buried his face into Ten’s neck. “I’ll take care of you,” he promised. 

.

Kun liked to play with their hands. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, if Kun could slot his fingers between theirs and kiss their knuckles, then he would do it. He could make an obstinate Ten do anything he wanted if he had his hand curved around the back of Ten’s neck. His fingers were like magnets for stress and tension, able to pull anxiety from Johnny’s twisted, tight muscles after a long day of work waiting tables with a pinch, and then with a deep kneading that often left Johnny feeling flayed open and raw and vulnerable. 

Kun had always been so giving with his touch.

He’d guided them during sex. It was not something they needed to talk about, usually. It was just one of those things that _was_. Kun led. Like an expert weaver sitting at the loom, Kun had threaded them together. 

And now he was gone. 

Johnny felt too big, holding himself over Ten, whose eyes were so dark they looked black. Colorless. Ten’s cheeks were pink with arousal, his lips gently parted. He looked smaller, naked. Johnny bracketed Ten’s hips with his wide hands and thought it was not too different from holding a porcelain teacup between his palms. Press too hard and the cup would shatter. 

“Johnny,” Ten gasped, back arching off the bed. “Johnny, please. I’m burning—!” His eyes rolled back into his skull as a wave of slick trickled down the backs of his thighs, shuddering when he lowered himself to the mattress.

Johnny closed his eyes. He told himself that Ten needed this, that this was okay. He told himself he needed this, too. He pushed into Ten slowly, teeth clenched so hard he thought they might shatter. “I’m sorry,” Johnny whispered.

“Harder,” Ten demanded. 

“I don’t want to hurt you—”

Ten sobbed and came between them, his hole clenching around Johnny’s length, his thighs trembling and squeezing against Johnny’s hips. When Johnny tried to pull out, Ten whimpered and locked his ankles behind Johnny’s back. “Stay,” he said quietly, tenderly. His fingers skittered over Johnny’s shoulders, the shy, uncertain touch of his hands at odds with what the rest of his body was doing. He was still crying. “Stay, please. Hold me. _Please_.”

Johnny, unable to break away from Ten’s gaze, nodded. They were the two of them, alone now, aching hearts atrophied. The absence of Kun was like a missing limb. Johnny shifted his weight over Ten and rolled his hips forward again, into his heat, and arousal hooked him by the navel suddenly when Ten groaned, guttural and deep, like he’d been sucker-punched. 

“I love you, you know,” Ten said when he’d found his breath again. Johnny quickened his pace. The mattress squeaked and rocked. Ten’s mouth hung open lazily, eyes hooded. “Even without Kun.”

A switch flipped.

Johnny turned Ten over with a grunt and pushed into him again, holding him down by the back of his neck, smothering his face into a pillow as he frantically chased after his own release that had started to climb with a tingle in his toes. “Why would you say it like that?!” he cried out, his words punctuated by the snapping of his hips.

Ten came again, his sobs muffled by the pillow, but he spasmed around Johnny’s body and tilted his ass up for Johnny to empty himself into as though sensing Johnny were near his edge as well. 

He was. He dug his fingers into Ten’s neck and came with a growl that ripped through his throat, that made the cords in his neck pull taut. The world went black, then white, then fuzzy grey. His ears rang, then cleared, then rang again. 

Ten was trembling beneath him.

“Fuck,” Johnny hissed. The shawl of dizzy heat that had accompanied his climax dropped from his shoulders, leaving him chilled. He quickly rolled off of Ten’s body and pulled at Ten’s arm, turning him over. “Fuck, I’m sorry, fuck—”

Ten looked up at him with eyes that were no longer black bottomless pits, but rather the warm brown that Johnny was used to, though swollen with tears. “It smells like him,” Ten said, his voice barely solid. “It smells like him. The pillow.”

Johnny fell forward, folded over Ten, face pressed into the pillow’s soft down. He inhaled as deeply as he could. Mandarin and basil. He inhaled again.

 _It feels like a hole in my chest,_ Ten had said earlier this morning, or was it yesterday now? Johnny teetered at the edge of the chasm, looking down. At the bottom was a churning whirlpool that would surely drown him, the waves choppy, the water black. 

He jumped.

.

Some time later, he felt Ten’s fingers in his hair, combing through the tangled locks. “Baby,” Ten was saying. “My poor baby. My Johnny. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for being selfish.”

Johnny’s whole face was wet and puffy. His chest felt like someone had tried to break it with a hammer. He was curled in Ten’s lap, listening to his heartbeat. “I promised Kun I’d take care of you,” Johnny said with a whimper.

“And I promised Kun I’d take care of you,” Ten mumbled. He scratched his nails lightly over Johnny’s scalp and Johnny purred, eyelids fluttering. “I’ll do better. I’m sorry, baby.”

The scent of Kun still lingered in the air, but Johnny knew that with time it would fade. With time, they would heal. He held onto Ten tighter.

.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please share your comments and kudos, thank you! 
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [my cc](http://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


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